Question ASUS TUF FX608JMR-F16.I75060 dropping keyboard inputs during high CPU usage in games

[CaptainBritish]

Hey all. This website kept coming up during my searches to try and troubleshoot this issue so I figured I'd post this thread here, apologies if there's a better subforum for this. I wasn't finding a solution in the World of Warcraft forums so I'm desperately trying anywhere else with people who know about technology. The main reason I'm posting this in a normal tech forum is because I can't be certain this is an issue exclusive to WoW.

So I just got a new laptop last week (ASUS TUF FX608JMR-F16.I75060 i7-14650HX, RTX 5060, 32GB RAM, Windows 11) and have been having a massive issue with WoW that I just can’t resolve for the life of me. Seemingly at random it’ll start dropping keyboard inputs, ranging from moderate irritation to completely unplayable. By this I mean I can be typing and it’ll skip key inputs, not any specific key but the entire keyboard. It could be one key press or even a key combination.

As far as I can tell this is an issue exclusively with WoW, not with the laptop itself. When it’s occurring in a chat box it almost feels like the difference between software mouse input and hardware, if that makes sense. I can physically feel the difference between the time it takes for a character to type when the issue is in play.

It becomes significantly worse of an issue in times when the hardware is being stressed. For example, if I enter into a main city with lots of players (which usually drops my FPS from 100 to the 40s-60s) it amps up, but if I go to an empty zone then it only becomes noticeable if I uncap my frame-rate.

I am not reaching even 60% CPU utilization at peak, GPU utilization is around 80-90% if I leave the game uncapped (but I don't do that unless I'm stress testing this specific issue.)

I’ve tried (brace yourselves):

• Removing all addons, cleaning Cache and WTF.
• Running WoW at minimal graphics settings.
• Switching APIs
• Turning off nVidia Smooth Motion
• Set affinity to high
• Added allowBackgroundInput “1”, synchronizeinput “0”, rawMouseEnable “0/1”, processAffinityMask “0” to the Config.wtf
• Turned off full-screen optimization
• Forced Windows to only use the discrete GPU with no Optimus enabled
• Turned off all in-game overlays
• Set compatibility mode to Windows 8, Run as Admin
• Ran WoW with no OEM software active that could conflict.
• Uninstalled/Re-installed keyboard drivers
• Updated ALL drivers including BIOS
• Changed keyboard repeat delay/repeat rate
• Turned off low latency mode.
• A complete clean Windows 11 install, with a clean WoW install (even though both are so recent it wouldn’t make sense to be the issue.)
• Set max FPS to 60 to prevent any potential thermal throttling issues.
• Turned off Target FPS in WoW, played around with all other graphics settings.
• Disabled E-Cores
• Completely disabled GameBarPresenceWriter.exe and Microsoft Game Bar
• Uninstalled all Xbox utilities
• Disabled USB Selective Suspend
• Uninstalled Copilot
• Disabled Hibernation
• Stripped services down to only vital Microsoft ones, setting non-vital services to manual only
• Disabled the Touchpad service
• Killed nearly all non-vital Windows processes including those related to OneDrive, Xbox, Nvidia, Intel, etc
• Disabled Gsync
• Disabled Hardware Acceleration in other apps
• Moved WoW to my second SSD (which is brand new, not from the OEM)
• Used Process Lasso to disable E-Cores, disable hyperthreading and stagger threads being used by WoW.
• Disabled CPU boost
• Probably more I've totally forgotten at this point

Some of these are obviously quite destructive to the OS but I reverted the changes once I confirmed they were not the issue. I don't have much of the ASUS bloatware installed, I stripped it down to just the vital services and G-Helper to replace ArmouryCrate but the issue occurs whether I'm on a clean install of Windows or the OEM install with all the bloatware active.

As far as I can tell this issue is only occurring in World of Warcraft, but WoW is the most CPU intensive game I play. The temps are relatively normal for this laptop (under load CPU hovers in the high 80s, GPU in the 70s) and the keyboard functions perfectly normally outside of WoW.

Any ideas?

 

[Quintessa]

Disabled E-Cores

Try Process Lasso (or Task Manager’s “Set affinity”) > force WoW to P-cores only (no logical E-cores at all). Alternatively, leave E-cores on but disable Hyperthreading just to test if thread juggling is what’s choking input.

 

[CaptainBritish]

Try Process Lasso (or Task Manager’s “Set affinity”) > force WoW to P-cores only (no logical E-cores at all). Alternatively, leave E-cores on but disable Hyperthreading just to test if thread juggling is what’s choking input.

Wouldn't that have the same effect as disabling E-cores entirely like I did? I also did set the affinity down to only 4 threads but it's possible Task Lasso will handle doing so better. I'll give process lasso and disabling Hyperthreading a try later tonight! Appreciate it.

 

[CaptainBritish]

Try Process Lasso (or Task Manager’s “Set affinity”) > force WoW to P-cores only (no logical E-cores at all). Alternatively, leave E-cores on but disable Hyperthreading just to test if thread juggling is what’s choking input.

Alright, tried everything you suggested. Hyperthreading disabled, disabled all E-Cores. I even tried the "stagger" option within Process Lasso but to no avail. Dunno if it means anything in regards for this but the chart in Process Lasso is showing a constant 100% responsiveness.

Out of curiosity I also downloaded LatencyMon at someone else's suggestion and left it running with WoW at an uncapped frame-rate. As far as I know there is no CPU throttling enabled within Windows and the Bios is up-to-date, not sure about the Bios itself but I'm about to reboot to check that out.

Edit: Yeah, not seeing any options to control CPU throttling in the BIOS itself.

Edit 2: I just tried disabling the CPU boost to see if it helped, nope.